Vienna, I hope to see you again soon...

Vienna, Austria- October 1-5, 2008

“This is disaster. I never ride train again, this is all disaster.” –My music professor Georges Backes

This Week’s Travel Tip(s): Georges Backes would say never ride the train but I say limit the number of museums you vist. We visited the homes of Joseph Haydn, two of Mozart’s homes, Franz Schubert, and then Beethoven’s. By the time we got to Beethoven’s nobody could pay attention.

American Song of The Week: “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing” by the Scissor Sisters at a Souvenir Shop in Vienna. Very catchy tune, almost as good as ‘Working For the Weekend’.

This is a long one; you might want to grab a cup of coffee…
This Weekend was a little different than any before. For everyone’s Mini-Field Tour class you take a 4 day trip with the entire class and the Professor. So Wednesday evening our History of Western Music class left for Vienna. We took a sleeper car from Zurich, Switzerland to Vienna so we could arrive in Vienna at 8 AM Thursday morning. This was the first night I have spent on a sleeper car and I have to say it was not that bad. It is a very tiny room with what appears to be 3 beds hanging from the wall on either side. The room was so small I could not even get a picture of it.
We arrived in Vienna and the 30 of us immediately hopped on a bus and went to the childhood home of famous composers Joseph & Michael Haydn. As this was the first house tour it was interesting to see that this is exactly where he got his start. After that we had lunch in the small town of Morbisch where there was supposedly a beautiful lake…nobody ever found the lake. This town however was unique because every building had a nest on top of it for storks to stay in. Our next stop was the Esterhazy Castle in Eisenstadt. This is where Joseph Haydn made his living working as the musician for the princes of Esterhazy from 1761-1790. Within this beautiful building Haydn had his own music hall which was amazing.

That was the end of that day and we headed to our hostel which had a gorgeous view over the entire city of Vienna. Unfortunately my Kodak has limits and I couldn’t get a great picture of it so I guess everyone will just have to go and see for themselves.

Friday morning we headed into the city centre where there was an unbelievable gothic cathedral. St. Stephen’s Cathedral was built in 1147 and really was breathtaking.

Mozart’s Vienna home was just a few minutes walk from the center, where we went for a guided tour that was very interesting of Mozart. In this house no pictures were allowed to be taken but that’s alright because all of these houses are in much different condition than they were when these people actually lived there. An interesting Mozart fact however is that he was quite the gambler and the ladies’ man. Many times in his life he needed a forward of money from friends to pay debts.

From then on it started getting a bit hazy trying to remember what everything was in my head. Vienna is a very large city and we covered many areas in a very short amount of time. It’s the first city I felt overwhelmed in as far as I definitely needed more time than what we were given. We visited the center which had an incredible fortress, the parliamentary buildings, the highest government housing, the ruins of the Austrian Empire, The Viennan Opera House, the Belvedere Castle, and others which I can not even remember. However we did get a sample of the world renowned Hotel Sacher Chocolate Cake which lived up to its reputation.

Friday evening we attended “Fledermaus”, an operetta from famous composer Johann Strauss. I expected a symphony with all singing and it turns out operetta’s are comedic musicals. It was all done in German so we didn’t get the jokes but there was a small screen above the stage with summaries of what is happening on stage.

I was expecting to see Statler & Waldorf from the Muppets heckling in the seats to the right..

Saturday morning was a free morning to do what anyone pleased but a few of us chose to take advantage of our knowledgeable teachers and followed them to the Hundertwasserhaus. This is an apartment building designed by the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser that anyone can live in. The architercture is brilliant. This artist had a couple of different projects the city hired him to do through town such as the outside of a downtown energy plant and a hotel just on the outskirts.

We all then went into the city center and tried to do as much sightseeing as we could in our limited time. We rushed through the city and wound up at an awesome market in the middle of town where they sold fish, fruits, vegetables, wine, kebabs, schnitzel, and everything else you could ever want. It is exactly what you imagine as an old city market. All we had time and money for was a quick schnitzel, it was excellent…

The whole group then got together and we all went to the homes of Franz Schubert and the apartment where it is believed that Ludwig Van Beethoven wrote his last will in 1802. Franz Schubert died of possible mercury poisoning which was used to treat his syphilis. Beethoven wrote incredible pieces of work but the most impressive is that as he aged he became deaf. He wrote his infamous 9th symphony without ever being able to hear it. As amazing an opportunity as all of this was, twenty-five 20 & 21 year olds were ready for something a little more active than passive.

We then rode the bus up to Kahlenberg, where in the words of Prof. Georges Backes we had “most marvelous view on City of Vienna”.

Following that was an excellent dinner with a true Austrian cuisine. It was all twenty-five students, four guides/professors, and some excellent red & white wine. An accordion man sat down and played a few songs for us and everyone tried to dance, he left not soon after he saw our pathetic dancing skills. This dinner lasted about three hours until Prof. Backes had to finally pull us all out of the restaurant. Somehow on the subway ride home The Star Spangled Banner began to be sung and naturally everyone kicked in and sang the most joyful but probably most hideous version in history. There was no better way to cap off the night.

Sunday was travel day but oh there was excitement. The total travel time Sunday was supposed to be 12 hours, which it was for the group. I made mine 14 hours. While in Germany we quickly went through a stop (Koblenz) where we were supposed to have 12 minutes in between trains. I decided to go get some French Fries that a friend said she had last weekend that were amazing. Well I got my fries, got to the train….and it as long as everybody else was gone. We actually had about 5 minutes between trains. This was towards the end of the trip so I found my way home easily but I turned a 1.5 hour remaining trip home into a 3.5 hour trip. On one of these last trains home by myself I met an interesting German: A one armed girl that ran the 100 & 200 at the Para-Olympics in NYC as fast as I did in high school. How is that for a humbling effect. From what I could tell by her limited English and my lack of German she was very nice. I later found out our Professor didn’t realize I was missing until the end so he couldn’t worry too much. Now the fries, they were very good. Don’t know if they were worth all of that, but they were still very good.

Paul Davis: If I remember correctly Vienna was the city you told me to visit. After being there I understand why you loved it so much! Hope all is well!
KK: You’re right, it’s my fault this time. Hope all is well!